A GIFT OF SCARS BY GREGG NORMAN

Gregg Norman has been favorably compared to author John Steinbeck, and Norman’s literary novel, A Gift of Scars, also dealing with the epic history and ramifications of The Great Depression – this time, as experienced by the vast country of Canada – is a worthy successor and companion work to Steinbeck’s impeccable masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. There are many similarities, but also many individualities, that easily demand such comparisons be made. Norman, like Steinbeck, counterpoints his character-driven story with sections of objective observations about the land, including its historical and sociological themes, even as he documents its period-determined physical devolution. But Norman is a contemporary writer, and his prose is more constrained and less dramatic than Steinbeck’s, though certainly no less intelligent, thoughtful, or perceptive.

Martin Wheeler is the profoundly complex protagonist of Gregg Norman’s evocative novel, A Gift of Scars. A young man evicted by his father, who finds community within a company of hobos drifting without purpose across a land plagued by hardship, who settles for a time with those drawn together into a poor man’s kind of shanty town, who finds himself mentored and supported by a collection of equally complex, meticulously crafted companion characters, provides the focus and perspective for this profoundly personal tale told amidst an historically pervasive devastation. Wheeler’s fortunes prove to be erratic and transforming, complicated by yearnings for a woman undefinably loved and left, and bedeviled by his own uncertainties of self. All of which makes for an intensely thoughtful and engaging literary read.

Joel R. Dennstedt – Top Reviewer for Readers’ Favorite

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